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"The Social Network"

A modern tale of genius, hubris and ethics is played out on the front lines of the Information Revolution in this incisive recounting of the origins of Facebook. The Columbia Pictures release, recipient of numerous critics groups' prizes, was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won three Oscars.

By CBSNews.com Producer David Morgan

Credit: Columbia Pictures

"The Social Network" explores the mutability of creativity and relationships, as it details the genesis and extraordinary growth of a revolutionary website. Although it tells the business and legal story of an enterprise created by what is now the world's youngest billionaire, it is more a story of friendship, ethics, and an awakening of one's power - and limitations.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Beyond the technological innovation that a 19-year-old computer student ushered in with his social networking site (originally called thefacebook.com), the film examines how we connect on a human, emotional level - which may or may not be facilitated by an Internet connection.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

In the film's opening scene we are introduced to Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a computer student at Harvard University in 2003, as he converses with his girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara). Obsessed with standing out in an Ivy League community that he believes prizes exclusivity, he preaches the value of getting into one of Harvard's final clubs. But Erica is insulted by his remarks to her and breaks up with him, delivering a most memorable (and unprintable) kiss-off line.

In just a few hours the site, Facemash.com, becomes enough of a viral hit on campus that the entire Harvard computer network crashes.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Brought before Harvard's administrative board, Zuckerberg says he expects recognition for having exposed flaws in the school's computer security systems. The university shows its "gratitude" by placing him on a 6-month academic probation.

Credit: Columbia

Facemash.com has made Zuckerberg a pariah on campus (at least among the women of Harvard). But the stunt also catches the eyes of a few entrepreneurs - identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer and parts of Josh Pence), and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) - who think Zuckerberg can help them launch a website of their own.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Inviting Zuckerberg into the restricted Porcellian Club (well, only as far as the bike room), the three approach him about helping set up Harvard Connection, a social networking website that would differ from sites like Friendster because it would trade on its exclusivity - the Harvard.edu domain and the cachet of allowing only certain people to interact with Harvard students. They sell the idea to Zuckerberg by suggesting its success will help rehabilitate him in the eyes of the women of Harvard. Zuckerberg says, "I'm in."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

... And that is the crux of a legal dispute about who "owns" the idea of Facebook. As Zuckerberg explains to his friend and business partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), his creation is separate from the Winklevosses' proposal in that he has taken a concept, changed it, and come up with an entity that bears his DNA. "I didn't use any of their code," he tells Eduardo. "A guy who builds a really nice chair doesn't owe money to everyone who has ever built a chair. They came to me with an idea, I had a better one."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

By now we are introduced to the fascinating structure of Aaron Sorkin's screenplay (based on the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich), which tells the story through legal depositions filed years after Facebook was born. Like the Akira Kurosawa classic "Rashomon," "The Social Network" uses competing points of view to decipher the origins of Facebook, the suspected motivations of its lead players, and character traits that may signify genius, competitiveness, ego - or all of the above.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

After Zuckerberg develops and releases TheFacebook.com, the Winklevoss Twins and Narendra are dumbfounded, convinced their idea for Harvard Connection has been stolen. Cameron Winklevoss refuses to take the matter to court, even after a cease and desist letter goes unheeded. "We're gentlemen of Harvard," he explains to the incredulous Narendra. "We don't sue." But Cameron's principles as a "gentleman of Harvard" are tested as Facebook becomes more and more popular - rising to the level of verb.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

The Winklevoss twins even take the matter to the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers (played in a memorable cameo by Hollywood manager Douglas Urbanski), which gets the pair nowhere as they try to convince him their idea (worth "millions") has been stolen.
SUMMERS: Well, I would suggest that you let your imaginations run away with you on a new project.
TYLER: You would.
SUMMERS: Yes. Everyone at Harvard is inventing something. Harvard undergraduates believe that inventing a job is better than finding a job so I'll suggest again that the two of you come up with a new new project.
CAMERON: I'm sorry, but that's not the point.
SUMMERS: Please arrive at the point.
CAMERON: You don't have to be an intellectual property expert to understand the difference between right and wrong.
SUMMERS: And you're saying that I don't?
CAMERON: Of course I'm not saying that.
TYLER: I'm saying that.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

For the Winkelvoss twins the last straw comes after competing in the Henley-on-Thames Royal Regatta - the "Super Bowl of crew." Although Harvard's rowing team is defeated, the distaste felt from losing the "brutally close" race comes second to the anguish of learning their loss has been witnessed by viewers on two continents - via Facebook! "Screw it," says Cameron. "Let's gut the freakin' nerd."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

As depositions are taken, Zuckerberg's antipathy for those who claim to have given birth to Facebook is barely hidden.

GAGE: Mr Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?
MARK: No.
GAGE: Do you think I deserve it?
MARK: What.
GAGE: Do you think I deserve your full attention?
MARK: I had to swear an oath before we began the deposition phase and I don't want to get arrested for perjury so I have a legal obligation to say 'no.'
GAGE: Okay, 'No,' you don't think I deserve your attention.
MARK: I think if your clients want to stand on my shoulders and call themselves tall they have a right to give it a try, But there's no requirement that I enjoy being here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - the minimum amount needed. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my employees and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Zuckerberg (who refers to the twins as the plural Winklevi) confides that they aren't suing for intellectual property theft. "They're suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn't work out the way they were supposed to for them."

But Zuckerberg is being sued on TWO fronts.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

The film also traces the gradual squeezing out of Eduardo Saverin as Facebook's CFO, thanks in part to the growing influence of entrepreneur Sean Parker, the founder of Napster. Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) tells Zuckerberg that Eduardo's plans to sell ads on the still-expanding site are short-sighted, and will jeopardize the future of the company, even with its promise of becoming a million-dollar dot-com. He lands Zuckerberg as his acolyte when he pronounces that a million dollars "isn't cool."

And what IS cool, Parker is asked? "A BILLION dollars."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Parker convinces Zuckerberg to move his operations from the East Coast to Silicon Valley. With Sean Parker in - and venture capitalists putting a half-million into Facebook.com and its new California offices - there is nowhere for Eduardo but out.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

"Creation myths need a devil," says Marilyn, the junior assistant to Mark's legal team, in assessing the ins-and-out of such a dispute. The filmmakers behind "The Social Network" are agnostic about such a need, insofar as the motivations and aspirations of the characters - and even the inherent truth - are open to different interpretations.

There is no clearly defined villain. And the hero is a young creative who appears capable of understanding the value of a social networking tool he has created - and yet exhibits social inadequacies and professes to not need friends. Even Parker, whose self-destructive drug use threatens the company, is less Machiavellian than he is simply a visionary who knows a winning formula when he sees one.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

There are delicious ironies, too. As Facebook proves to be much larger and more influential than any of the principals could have foreseen, its success becomes a paradox: A site founded on the notion of exclusivity has in a few short years expanded beyond universities and high schools to include anyone with a working e-mail address - 500 million people and counting. And as Zuckerberg (now worth billions) tells an attorney, he could buy Harvard's Phoenix Club - whose inaccessibility was a touchstone for him - and turn it into his ping pong room ... a sign of how very unimportant that cachet means to him now.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Aaron Sorkin

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Aaron Sorkin - who knew nothing of Facebook before working on the film - said his inspiration for the story was not modern movies but Aristole and the classics, with a tragic hero set against a backdrop of the Ivy League and Silicon Valley. After examining Ben Mazrich's book research and conducting interviews with some of the people involved, Sorkin said, "At first I was lost because I thought, 'Holy cow, no two people are telling the same story.' But then I realized, 'Wait, this is great - no two people are telling the same story! That's what I'm going to do.' So I came up with the device of the parallel depositions. Not only could the different versions of the truth be dramatized, but I was able to put everyone in one room and have Mark be sitting face-to-face with his accusers." Sorkin hit pay dirt with his 1989 play "A Few Good Men," which he adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise. Other films include "Malice," "The American President," and "Charlie Wilson's War." But he is best known as the creator of the Emmy-winning TV series "The West Wing" (1999-2006).

Credit: Columbia Pictures

David Fincher

Best Director nominee David Fincher was a cameraman for Industrial Light & Magic and a music video director before making his feature film debut with "Alien 3." His other credits include "Seven," "Fight Club," "The Game," "Panic Room," "Zodiac," and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." He is currently filming an English-language version of Stieg Larsson's thriller, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

A rough cut of the film's opening was temped-tracked with a bright rock song which composer Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (left) said made the film feel like a John Hughes teen comedy. (The rough cut did also feature bits of NIN's "Ghosts.") Reznor and Atticus Ross (right) took inspiration from 1970s and '80s electronic scores by Wendy Carlos, Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, and created an electronically-generated soundscape of tremulous strings and an eerie, wordless choir under a plaintive acoustic piano. Their Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated score captures not the bright spirit of youth but its painful regret, loneliness and insecurity. As the dissonance increases, it is as if we were hearing the sound of innocence lost.

Jesse Eisenberg

Best Actor Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg) is a stage and screen actor and playwright who made his film debut in "Rodger Dodger" (2002). He received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for "The Squid and the Whale." His other credits include "The Emperor's Club," "The Education of Charlie Banks," Wes Craven's "Cursed," "The Village," "The Living Wake," "One Day Like Rain," "The Hunting Party," "Holy Rollers," "Adventureland," "Zombieland" and "Solitary Man." Upcoming projects include "30 Minutes or Less," the animated film "Rio."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Andrew Garfield

Golden Globe nominee Andrew Garfield (Eduardo Saverin) won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as a young ex-con in "Boy A" (2007). His early stage work and TV appearances on "Swinging" and "Doctor Who" were followed by "Lions for Lambs," "Red Riding Trilogy," and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." He recently starred with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in the film version of "Never Let Me Go." Coming up: starring as Peter Parker in the next "Spider-Man" film.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Justin Timberlake

Beyond his career as a Grammy Award-winning singer, Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) has acted in such films as "Alpha Dog," "Black Snake Moan," "Southland Tales," "The Open Road" and "Friends With Benefits." He's also done voice work for "Shrek the Third" and "Yogi Bear." Appearances on "Saturday Night Live" have also netted Timberlake two Emmy Awards, including for the virtual music video "**** in a Box."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Armie Hammer

The great-grandson of industrialist/philanthropist Armand Hammer, Armie Hammer (Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss) starred as evangelist Billy Graham in "Billy: The Early Years" (2008). His other credits include "Flicka," "Blackout," and on TV, "Arrested Development," "Veronica Mars," "Gossip Girl" and "Reaper." He will next be seen in "Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Similarly to how a computer-animated version of Brad Pitt was digitally added to a different actor's body in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," after capturing Pitt's performance and aging it in a computer, Armie Hammer's performance as the Winklevoss twins was aided by body double Josh Pence and the computer wizards at the FX house Lola. While some shots employed a split-screen merging of two Hammer performances into the same frame, in several shots Hammer and Pence acted side-by-side. With markings on Pence's face to help track movements and speech, a "mask" was generated of Hammer's reading of the lines that was then superimposed onto Pence's body.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Max Minghella

Following voice work in "Bee Season," Max Minghella (Divya Narendra) appeared in Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana." His other credits include "Art School Confidential," "Elvis and Annabelle," "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People," "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," and "Agora." His upcoming films include "Hippie Hippie Shake" and "The Darkest Hour."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Rooney Mara

Only three people's names were changed in the script, and one character didn't even exist in real life: Erica Albright, whose dumping of Mark at the beginning becomes the closest thing to a "Rosebud" for the film. In her very brief scenes, Rooney Mara plays Erica - the girl who got away - with remarkable depth and panache. Mara's previous credits include "Youth in Revolt," "Tanner Hall," "Nightmare on Elm Street," "Dare" and "The Winning Season." She will next star as Lisbeth Salander in Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Brenda Song

Brenda Song, who plays Christy, a "Facebook groupie" who becomes Eduardo's memorably jealous/crazy girlfriend, starred in the Disney Channel series "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody," and its spin-off, "The Suite Life on Deck." Other Disney fare includes "Phil of the Future," "Stuck in the Suburbs," "Get a Clue," and "The Ultimate Christmas Present." Her TV credits include "ER," "Judging Amy," "That's So Raven," and "100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd," and she's been seen in the films "Like Mike" and "College Road Trip."

Credit: Columbia Pictures

In bringing this story to the screen, the filmmakers did not - surprise! - obtain the cooperation of the main players, or of Harvard University.

Although some exteriors were filmed in Cambridge, Mass., Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore stood in for the Harvard campus. In one shot, in which the geography of the location required the camera negative to be flipped in order to match other shots, Eisenberg wore a GAP sweatshirt with the lettering printed backwards.

Credit: Columbia Pictures

Mark Zuckerberg

Reactions to the film from those who lived it were mixed. Mark Zuckerberg at first professed he would never watch it, but then he rented out a theatre for his Facebook employees. His critique? They got the T-shirts right! The company's dismissive response to "Social Network" was softened, a tad, by the critical praise, box office and awards that the film received. Zuckerberg even made a cameo appearance with Jesse Eisenberg during the "Social Network" actor's Jan. 29 hosting gig on NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; NBC/Broadway Video

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin was circumspect in his reaction. In an op-ed for CNBC's website, he described watching a film of his life "with amazement and humility," and noted, "I have wondered how Hollywood would depict [Facebook's] creation and development on the big screen. Would it be accurate? Would it showcase our failures, as well as our successes?" He then answered the question vaguely. "What I gleaned from viewing 'The Social Network' was bigger and more important than whether the scenes and details included in the script were accurate. After all, the movie was clearly intended to be entertainment and not a fact-based documentary."

Credit: Facebook

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss

No such evasiveness was apparent from the Winklevoss twins. In an interview with CTV's "Canada AM," Cameron Winklevoss (right) described "The Social Network" as "a great generational film, it's very entertaining. From my perspective, the filmmakers tried to tell three different sides of a story. I don't think there (are) any conclusions and it's really up to the viewer to make their own decision." Tyler Winklevoss added, "You will find it all happened and it is very much a true story." They are now suing Facebook again, claiming a settlement they received in 2008 was based on an under-valued assessment of the company's worth.

Credit: Julien M. Hekimian/Getty Images

Best Adapted Screenplay winner Aaron Sorkin (seen with "The King's Speech" screenwriter David Seidler at the Governors Ball) described winning the Oscar to CBS' "The Early Show": "It's a surreal experience. It's like being hit in the head with the world's greatest baseball bat, it really is. You have cartoon stars and birds floating around your head. And it's honestly, it's only now . . . just a little past 4:00 a.m. [in Los Angeles] that it's really starting to sink in and I'm starting to remember pieces of it. Frankly, I couldn't tell you what I did or said when I was on stage yet."

Trent Reznor (left) and Atticus Ross' "Social Network" score beat out the other major contender, Hans Zimmer's score for "Inception" - both unorthodox, but "Social Network"'s music being even less traditional-sounding than what the Academy usually honors.

"I've befriended Hans Zimmer in this process of battling him at award shows," Reznor said backstage after accepting his Oscar. "And he said, 'I hope that your score does win because it's a vote for - it opens the field up a bit, the textures what one can expect in film.'

"And I personally would like to do a very traditional score with an orchestra, but I also see where I think there's a general sense of conservatism in scores these days, and I think it can branch out into stuff and has a little richer palette and wider palette with sound. And I was very impressed we actually won this with a very non-traditional-sounding score. And I say that, with all due respect. I think it may encourage a number of artists who hadn't thought in terms of rigid film scoring, that there's a possibility out there to work in film and make something interesting, a bit different."

Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill

"The Social Network" won the Best Film Editing Oscar for its intricate balancing act of time and POVs.

Kirk Baxter (left), who'd worked with director David Fincher on "Zodiac" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," had advice for viewers: "Find something you truly love doing and great things can happen. The hard part is, you got to meet someone like Fincher. Cheers!"

Angus Wall, who also worked with Fincher on several films, credited the director with helping start his career 20-odd years ago. "Also, a big thank-you to our wives, who allow us to have incredibly passionate love affairs with our families and our work."